Memories Never Fade: An SG1 Anthology
by cyher
Summary: Daniel saves the day, Cam and Vala get some interesting backstories, Jonas has a breakdown, Teal'c compares Tauri children to Jaffa children, an episode ends differently  - but not really  - and there are even some smoochies, in a mildly tragic way .
1. You Always Hurt the Ones You Love

**Anthology Notes:** This series of ficlets was originally written for a Last Author Standing challenge, in which prompts were given and writers had a week to write a 1,000-word-or-less fic on it. Each chapter is a different story (organized by where it would fit in the series), and you don't need to read one to understand the next. The main character(s) featured in each story will be in the boilerplate info, so if you only want to read Daniel stories, for instance, you can easily do that. Everything mentioned in the summary is written, but - depending on when you read this - I may not have gotten them all uploaded.

**Title:** You Always Hurt the Ones You Love  
><strong>CharacterRelationships:** Teal'c  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> None.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> Winner of LAS Challenge 11: The Things We Do for Family

Teal'c watched the children of Earth with great interest. Sometimes, they seemed so unlike the children of Chulak - blessed without the burden of service to the goa'uld, they lived a life freer than they could possibly imagine. But other times, the similarities were striking.

O'Neill had been refueling his vehicle one day when Teal'c saw a small boy running around the small convenience store, ducking behind ice machines and garbage barrels while shooting imaginary enemies with his finger. He did so with the wild and reckless abandon of both human and Jaffa youth - laughing in the face of danger.

Then he tripped, scraping his knee against the rough concrete. He sat in silence for a moment, stunned that the ground beneath him would dare attack his army of one, spill his blood and end his reign as Master and Commander of all the 7-Eleven. As pain and realization set it, the boy began to cry.

It wasn't long before the boy's father picked him up, tended to his wounded knee and kissed the child's head. Teal'c looked away then.

The boy reminded him so much of Ry'ac. He often tried not to think about his family or their fate. Toppling a god - even a false one - took greater effort than anything he had ever attempted and Teal'c could not afford the luxury of worrying over the ones he loved. He couldn't afford to wonder how being the blood of a shol'va affected their lives. But some days - like now - he couldn't help himself.

Who was there to pick up his own son when he fell? Did his mother have the time, or were her days so filled with survival that caring for minor injuries fell by the wayside? Perhaps Master Bra'tac or another Jaffa had taken the boy in, unfazed by the reputation Teal'c had created for them. Or perhaps his greatest fear would be realized, and the hand leading his son through life would be that of Apophis himself. The possibility was not a slim one. The goa'uld could do it in a heartbeat and WOULD do it for no other reason than to spite the one who had betrayed him.

Teal'c quickly pushed the thought aside, choosing instead to focus on a third option. Perhaps the situation would force Ry'ac to pick himself up and guide his own life. Perhaps the self-reliance would make him a far more capable man than Teal'c would ever know.

That thought made Teal'c smile. For all the hurt his actions may bring down on his wife and son, the possibility that *something* good could come of it - even if he was unsuccessful in defeating Apophis and freeing his family and his people - was enough to keep him moving forward. It was enough to make the pain he caused his family matter.


	2. Looking Back

**Story Title:** Looking Back  
><strong>CharacterRelationships:** Daniel  
><strong>Summary:<strong> When his team is taken hostage, it's up to Daniel to rescue them.  
><strong>Prompt: <strong>A character does something brave but stupid  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG-13  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> hostage situation (nothing worse than has been on the show), childhood bullying and silly made-up names. Also an open ending, if that bothers you.

Daniel had always been good at hiding. It wasn't cowardice; it was pragmatism.

When he was 10, a group of sixth-graders had taken to pushing him around after school before dumping the contents of his bag on the ground and throwing his books as far as they could. Daniel felt confident that - had he leftover lunch money to steal - it would have been theirs.

They didn't frighten him, but it was an annoyance - especially the day a paperback had landed in a dirty puddle. He could have fought back, but it was four-to-one and Daniel was not particularly tall. He could have got a teacher, but that would have made things worse. Teachers liked him, but they couldn't always be there. Besides, if there was one thing he had picked up in his 10 years (besides near-fluency in Arabic and French) it was that nobody liked a fink.

And so he hid. It wasn't difficult. They were pretty loud, and on more than one occasion he had been able to flatten himself against a wall or duck behind a trash bin as they passed. Eventually he would start watching them, learning their routines.

But his pre-emptive avoidance didn't always work. Sometimes he'd think he was in the clear only to be spotted out of the corner of an eye. Of course, he did have some advantages. Not only was he smaller than them, but he was more agile, better able to weave around pedestrians, fit into hidey holes and wriggle his way up trees they couldn't even find a handhold for.

He was smarter than them, too. Most of the time if he took to a tree - or even a fire escape - they'd pass by, never once bothering to look up.

Daniel's only advantage now was distance.

As he looked back to those childhood years, he realized if he were ever to look back to this day, he wouldn't have been able to explain how it had happened.

He wasn't sure who had convinced General Hammond that the benefits of adhering to the locals' rule of no weaponry outweighed actually not having weaponry, but they had.

And now they were far from the Stargate, separated and in trouble. Daniel hadn't been there when Jack, Sam and Teal'c were taken. He wished he could say it was because he was looking at ruins, studying glyphs or even chatting with friendly townsfolk. That certainly sounded better than _I was in the bathroom when my entire team was kidnapped._

They called themselves The Sangulibres, and they were a small faction who had broken away from the town. When they became angry about their self-imposed exile, they would return to terrorize the peaceful people whose medicines rivaled anything Earth had ever seen.

The locals had not mentioned The Sangulibres during prior talks.

Daniel's first thought had been to make for the stargate, dial Earth and get help, but the locals seemed quite certain the impatient Sangulibres, who wanted the key to gate travel, would have killed SG-1 by then. It was only by luck that they hadn't realized SG-1 was a four-man team.

Daniel pleaded for them to help get his friends back, but they just looked at him regretfully. Their policy was to leave the Sangulibres be, and they would not break it.

Fortunately there was one boy who couldn't have been older than 12 that had taken a liking to Teal'c, of all people.

"My name is Niklyk," he had said. "And I will help you."

And that was how this plan came to be. Jack, Sam and Teal'c were bound together in a clearing. Three burly men stood around them, rifling through SG-1's packs, occasionally holding up an item and gesticulating wildly, demanding to know its function.

If Daniel squinted from his spot crouched behind a shrub up an embankment from the clearing he could see Niklyk, also hidden from the Sangulibres.

Daniel had been observing them, but when one picked up a giant stick, he knew it was time to act. A blunt object to the head was a blunt object to the head, whether it was strictly speaking a weapon or not.

Daniel stood and called to them, waving his hands in the air.

"Hey! You!" he shouted. The Sangulibres and SG-1 both turned their heads to look at him, the latter with wide-eyed expressions. Daniel yelled again - a few choice phrases in the local tongue, taught with a blush by Niklyk. One by one the Sangulibres' eyes grew wide - not with the horror of SG-1's, but with anger.

Ignoring their captives, the men headed his way.

Daniel turned and ran. He could hear them scrambling up the hill, closer than he would have liked, but there was no time to question the wisdom of his plan now. The Sangulibres were pushing farther into the forest.

Finally, his lungs burning, Daniel saw the tree. It sprouted from the ground in a Y with large horizontal branches farther up. Daniel jumped, using the tree itself for more height and reaching for the the first horizontal branch. He fell short. His fingernails scraped the bark, breaking as it crumbled and fell away. He had momentum though and had been able to throw his left arm over the branch.

Ignoring the pain, he hauled one leg up until it met wood. Daniel could hear his pursuers closing in as he pulled himself into the tree. It was a stark reminder that he was no longer 10 years old.

They came crashing through the brush. Daniel held his breath, pressing the side of his face into the rough wood. He hoped Niklyk had been able to free the others.

The men stormed back and forth, only a handful of feet below Daniel. They yelled at one another but Daniel couldn't hear the words over the pounding of his own heart. He squeezed his eyes shut.

_Please don't look up, please don't look up, please don't look up._

_**Note:** _Some people that read this were kind of bothered by the ending. But come on. It's SG-1. Is there any chance they don't all make it out? :)


	3. Speechless

**Story Title**: Speechless  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Two dozen languages still can't provide Daniel with the right words to explain himself.**  
>CharacterRelationships**: Daniel/Sha're, Jack, Daniel  
><strong>Prompt: <strong>"What the HELL was I thinking?"  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Some talk of canon character death

Jack watched Daniel lean back into the couch, his hand lightly cradling a beer bottle. It had been an interesting day. Jack knew the date Daniel's wife Sha're had died, but until now - barely one year after her death - he hadn't known that her birthday had been mere weeks later.

Daniel had said he wanted to spend the day celebrating her life, not mourning her passing, and it was with that in mind that SG-1 - Daniel, Jack, Carter and Teal'c - had gathered for an evening of food and friendship. Teal'c had been reluctant at first, and Jack couldn't blame him. After all, if he'd been the one to kill the object of celebration, Jack knew he wouldn't feel particularly welcome.

It was a measure of the man that Daniel had insisted.

"You saved me," he said when Teal'c balked. "It hurt, but you saved me. And in all reality, you probably saved her, too."

That day Daniel cooked traditional Abydonian food - well, as traditional as you could get with Earth ingredients - and told so many stories about Sha're, Skaara, Kasuf and the rest of his adopted people that Jack kept expecting him to accidentally repeat one. But he never did, and each new tale lit up his face more than the one that had come before it.

But night had fallen now. Teal'c and Carter had left, there were no new stories to tell and a sense of melancholy was beginning to fill the void. Jack sat down next to him.

"Great party," he said. Daniel nodded but said nothing.

Jack sat there for a few moments before turning his attention to the empty bottles and plates littering the room. He had just reached for the first dish when Daniel spoke.

"I really loved her, you know. More than anything."

"Yeah, I know."

"And she loved me, too. She didn't care that-" He stopped, seemed to recompose his thoughts and tried again. "Even when she knew I wasn't 100 percent ... honest. I thought for sure she'd leave me, and I'd be stuck on that planet alone."

"What?" Jack said. "I know I've been drinking tonight but ... what?"

Daniel leaned forward and bowed his head before cocking it slightly to look at him. Jack noticed an almost imperceptible shake to his fingers. Finally, Daniel took a breath as if to speak, but whatever words he was going to say died in his throat.

"This is insane," he said instead. "I should go."

"Oh, no no no," Jack said as he placed a firm hand on Daniel's shoulder. "I know I'm not Mr. Talks-a-Lot, but you always have been, so give it. Spill. Talk."

Daniel coughed as he took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes and the bridge of his nose. "All right," he finally said. He beckoned for Jack to move closer. "Come here."

"You do know that there's no one else here, right?

"Jack," Daniel said in that exasperated tone of his.

"All right, okay," he said as he leaned closer.

When Jack could feel Daniel's breath on his neck, he waited for him to speak, to whisper something in his ear that by the light of day would seem wholly inconsequential but in the fog of the evening felt like anything but.

Words never came. Instead, Daniel turned his head slightly and pressed his lips to Jack's cheek. His eyelashes tickled Jack's skin as eyes closed and Jack felt a gentle warmth as Daniel rested a hand on the opposite side of his neck.

It was perhaps the most chaste and yet most intimate kiss Jack had received in a long time ... and he froze.

The tension in the room was palpable, and before Jack could even process what had happened, let alone form thoughts about it, Daniel was pulling away and putting his glasses back on as he muttered an awkward apology and goodbye before crossing the room and disappearing out the front door.

Jack sat, unmoving. The room seemed to disappear as thoughts whizzed through his brain, trying to make sense of the last few minutes and the years that had come before them. Finally, his focus returned and his eyes settled on on Daniel's car keys, gleaming on the coffee table. He picked them up and walked out the door.

Daniel was sitting on the steps, his back to Jack.

"I forgot my keys," he said.

Jack sat down next to him.

"You know, Daniel," he finally said, "I don't really care if you're ... you know ... or in-between or whatever. But the thing is, I'm not ... I can't be-"

"Jack, don't be ridiculous," Daniel said. "I don't know what the hell I was thinking in there. I know that you and I are so not the same. But I just..." Daniel paused again.

"When I came back from Abydos," he continued, "after Apophis had taken Sha're, you were quite literally my only friend in the world. And I was just thinking awhile back, when you and Teal'c were trapped in that glider..."

Jack remembered it well - the first time Earth had tried to repurpose a Goa'uld death glider had left the two of them near death halfway across the solar system. It was only through the combined effort of Carter, her father and Daniel that they had survived.

"I realized then that I had been lying to you," Daniel said. "And with the work that we do ... anything can happen at any second, and I just ... wanted you to know who I am. I didn't want our friendship to be tainted with a lie. But I didn't know how to say it."

They lapsed into silence again. It was Jack who spoke first.

"Just so you know," he said, "What I'm hearing is that I'm so amazing I left a guy who speaks 27 languages speechless." Jack grinned and nudged him with his shoulder as Daniel burst into laughter.

"Let's go inside," Jack said. "It's freezing out here."


	4. Love, Hope and Sacrifice

**Story Title:** Love, Hope and Sacrifice  
><strong>CharacterRelationships**: Sam, Teal'c, Martouf  
><strong>Prompt: <strong>Change a canon scene**  
><strong>**Rating**: PG-13  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Canon character death  
><strong>Notes: <strong>A re-do of Martouf's last scene in "Divide and Conquer"

"Samantha..."

Martouf's voice was barely a whisper, scared and pleading. Teal'c watched as she raised her weapon. She didn't want to fire, but she could, and she would.

Teal'c fired first.

The force of his blast sent the Tok'ra stumbling forward, his finger slipping from the device that would have destroyed him beyond his colleagues' ability to review the technology that had allowed evil commands to sleep inside his head.

Major Carter caught Martouf as he fell. Kneeling on the gateroom floor, she cradled him in her arms as they tearfully whispered to one another before the light faded from his eyes.

Major Carter and Martouf had never been lovers, but they had known love for one another and shared a bond that Teal'c could not begin to fathom. She looked up, and Teal'c coudn't tell if she was looking at him or through him, but the sadness tinged with anger was unbearable.

He looked away. Teal'c hoped she would be able to forgive him one day, as others had for his part in the deaths of their loved ones, and that her passion and anger would be directed at those who had put them all in this position in the first place.

But if it didn't ... if her hatred burned hot for the one who had taken the Tok'ra forever from the universe ... it was better directed at him than her.


	5. Sound

**Story Title**: Sound  
><strong>CharacterRelationships**: Jonas Quinn, Dr. MacKenzie  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Prompt: <strong>Flashback  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Jonas has some lingering issues from events on Kelowna.  
><strong>Warning: <strong> It's not a happy flashback.

When Jonas arrived on Earth, he immersed himself in Daniel Jackson's office, reading his notes, examining his artifacts, learning about the man he only knew a short while.

He felt a tremendous amount of respect for Dr. Jackson, as well as sadness for his passing, and guilt for the manner in which it had happened. He tried not to dwell on it, but then a month passed, and he didn't have a choice.

"What happened last week?" Dr. MacKenzie asked.

"A low-pressure system was making its way across the Midwest, pretty much drenching the -" MacKenzie held up his hand.

"Not in the weather, Mr. Quinn," he said.

"Oh," Jonas looked down at his hands."I was walking around the base - that's really all I can do, you guys won't let me go anywhere else - did you know there's a firing range here?"

"I do," MacKenzie answered. "It's a large mountain."

"Yeah, so I was walking with Major Carter, and I guess we were coming up on the range, because I could hear it. Those large weapons of yours, the ... P90s?" MacKenzie nodded, and Jonas continued. "They make an _impressive_ sound. It's really something else." Jonas stopped talking. A smile danced briefly on his lips before wavering away. "But then someone was using one of your smaller handguns..."

"The Beretta."

"That one," Jonas said. "Yeah. I don't ... I don't know what happened."

MacKenzie consulted his notes and looked at Jonas over the rims of his glasses. "Major Carter says you stopped and flung yourself against the wall before sinking to the ground, visibly shaken and unable to speak for several minutes."

"Oh. Yes, that happened."

"I see," MacKenzie said.

The two lapsed into silence, the only sounds coming from the clock ticking on the wall.

"When the alarms started going off back on Kelowna," Jonas finally said, "I got this feeling. This overwhelming sense of dread. One of my friends went running from the room, the others dropped like flies and I couldn't do anything. Have you ever been in a situation where you knew - or, you thought you knew - you were going to die? And so was everyone and everything else around you? It is suffocating.

"And through all that, there was Dr. Jackson. He pulled out his weapon, the ... Beretta?"

MacKenzie nodded at the term.

"Anyway, he pulled it out and fired at the window. It was 15 shots - I can hear them, plain as day - and with each one I could feel my heart beating faster and harder and like it could stop at any second."

Jonas stopped. He closed his eyes and rubbed at his face, as if trying to scrub away the memory.

"It's going to sound crazy, but when I heard those shots again the other day, it was like reliving not only that moment but the next day as well. Watching my friends die. Knowing that Dr. Jackson suffered the same fate. Being muzzled by a government that only wanted to destroy human life under the guise of security. It was too much."

MacKenzie leaned forward and looked at Jonas with a compassion that betrayed the base's general view of the man as "head-shrinking quack."

"Jonas, what you experienced was a flashback triggered by what you heard," he said. "It's not a terribly unusual occurrence for someone who's been through a traumatic event, and it most definitely does not sound 'crazy.'"

"Will it always be like that?" Jonas asked.

"No," MacKenzie said. "I can help you."


	6. Crashing Down

**Story Title:** Crashing Down  
><strong>CharacterRelationships:** Cameron Mitchell  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Little Cam Mitchell's life changed forever when his father's plane crashed.  
><strong>Prompt: <strong>A character at 10 years old.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> It might be a uncomfortable for anyone who's had a seriously ill/injured loved one recently

Cam's world came crashing down when he was 10 years old. His days, once filled with camping, Kansas basketball and Grandma's macaroons were now filled with extended stays from Aunt Emma, sleepless nights and the knowledge that life would never be the same again.

"Daddy's been in an accident," his mother said. Her voice wavered, and that, more than anything, sent shivers of terror down Cameron's spine. One thing had seemed a constant his entire life: His parents were the strongest people in the world. They feared nothing; they could do anything.

Except it wasn't true. His father - who always said if it were meant to be in the air, he could keep it there - was lying in a hospital bed because the plane he had been flying came hurtling back to the ground, and his mother could not contain her worry.

She took him to the hospital several times, but Cam couldn't make himself go into his father's room. He didn't want to see him that way. And no matter how many times he tried to convince himself that it was all an elaborate prank, and he'd step inside to see his father with a rubber glove blown up and stretched over his head like a chicken with a "Gotcha!" expression on his face, he couldn't. No matter how much he wanted to believe the military would swoop in with some top secret technology that would give his dad new legs that looked, felt and worked just like his old ones, he knew they wouldn't.

So instead Cam sat in the hall on a wooden bench and waited for his mother to come out of his father's room. Today she left him with a cola, a comic book and a brown bag of macaroons that hadn't tasted the same since the accident.

The bench started to make his backside ache while the light reflecting off the linoleum floor and the smell of antiseptic assaulted his eyes and nose.

Fortunately, he knew where to go.

There was a small chapel tucked in a corner on the first floor. Well, a sign on the door said it was a chapel, and indeed a simple cross sat on a table at the head of the room while a few small couches served as pews, but if the jackets, paperback novels and lunchbox detritus were anything to go by, the room hadn't been used as anything more than a spot for orderlies and janitors who didn't want to trudge halfway across the campus to their lockers on lunch and dinner breaks.

Cam liked this room. It was quiet and dim, and the burgundy carpet, though thin, felt soft beneath his feet. On a good day, he would eat his lunch and flip through the novels ranging from tales of the Old West to killer St. Bernards. Afterward, he would add his soda can to a pile that some artistic soul was slicing up in a half-finished attempt to create a majestic cross in shining blue, red and green before hurrying back to wait on his mother.

But today was different. Today he entered the chapel - empty as usual - and lowered himself into the first pew. Nothing made him feel better. Not the quiet, not the darkness, not anything. His eyes locked onto the cross at the front of the room. _Why are you doing this?_ he thought. He wanted to scream and yell and pray for things to be different, to go back to the way they were, but the words stuck in his throat.

His body shook with words and tears and a life that that wouldn't come. Squeezing his eyes closed, he stretched out across the couch and pressed his face against its scratchy upholstery, breathing in the scent of old cigarettes and long-ago spilled coffee. It calmed him, and minutes later he was on his feet and then back to his bench near his father's room. His mother was sitting there.

"Where were you?" she asked.

"Bathroom," Cam lied as took his seat next to her. She watched him for a moment before laying her hand on his head and smoothing his hair.

"Your father would like to see you," she said. Once again Cam found himself wanting to speak but lacking the words, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. "He really would, Cameron," his mother continued. "Please, just say hello."

Cam said nothing. She took his silence for agreement and stood, pulling him up with her. Gripping his brown bag tightly in his hands, he let her lead him into his father's room. Cam looked at the window, walls and the chairs before allowing his eyes to settle at the foot of the bed. His gaze traveled upward, following a blanket that was flat where it shouldn't be until he saw his father's legs - wrongly short and rounded - beneath the covers.

Cam's breath came quickly and he could feel unshed tears beginning to well up.

He swallowed hard as he continued his search, finally landing on his father's face.

"Hey, Cam," his father said softly. Cameron's lip began to tremble and before he could eke out a shaky hello, his father dramatically sniffed the air, as he had numerous times before after a long day's work. "Do I smell Granny's macaroons?" he asked.

Cam ran forward and jumped onto the bed, wrapped his arms around his father and cried, shaking with each sob. His father held him tightly with the same strong arms that picked him up when he had fallen from a tree when he was 8 and had held him after nightmares. His mother came forward then, placing a slender hand on his shoulder.

"It's going to be okay," his father said. "It'll to take more than a plane crash to keep the Mitchells down."

And in that moment, Cam found peace. In that moment he realized that everything - and nothing - had changed.


	7. Tricks of the Trade

**Story Title:** Tricks of the Trade  
><strong>CharacterRelationships:** Vala  
><strong>Prompt: <strong>Breaking In  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> None

Vala began learning the art of thievery when she was very young. She started with shoplifting and pickpocketing and soon was able to find an easy mark and spot an unguarded shelf with ease. But the net gain was never great. Perhaps enough for a few good meals or a night at an inn if she were lucky.

That was when she began studying locks. It was quite the education.

Men, she later discovered, were a lot like locks. Once picked, the information they gave up could be more valuable than everything in their homes. Of course, that didn't preclude the taking of their homes, money and sometimes even the clothes off their back, but it was the *knowledge* - blueprints, security codes, schedules and dirt - that made for the most lucrative of jobs.

And there were just as many types of man as there were locked doors - each requiring a different method to break.

Some were far too confident for what they actually offered, and a swift kick was all it took. Others required a bit more finesse. A light hand. Gentle nudging. Careful caresses. And some were too stubborn for any of the above, and the only solution was tear off the cover, rip out the wires and do a little rerouting until she had bullied her lock into submission.

And then there was Daniel Jackson. She'd kicked him. She'd charmed him. She'd spirited his consciousness off to another world, bound him to her, and even taken over his body, to no avail.

What she wanted - what she'd never really wanted before - he wasn't giving, and Vala had exhausted nearly all of her tricks. There was only one left, but it was one that had been in motion since the moment she met him - like a program running in the background.

Patience and a hacksaw.


End file.
